Cleaning compositions such as light duty cleaning compositions may be used for cleaning a variety of surfaces including animate and inanimate surfaces. Inanimate surfaces include hard surfaces of the sort found in kitchens and bathrooms from sinks and work surfaces to pans and dishes. Such cleaning compositions may be formulated in solid, liquid or gel form and are typically used in liquid form, for example as an aqueous liquid. The compositions generally contain one or more surfactants. Such surfactants may be non-ionic surfactants, anionic surfactants, cationic surfactants or amphoteric surfactants. Surfactants are surface active agents which tend to be amphiphilic molecules capable of interacting with soil to be cleaned from a surface to enable the surface to be cleaned. A wide variety of chemically different surfactants are known for such purposes.
It is known to provide compositions which are mixtures of different surfactants. However, it is difficult to predict what effect mixing surfactants may have because of a wide variation in the chemical structure of individual surfactants. Complexes between chemically different surfactants can give rise to compositions which are unstable and which may form precipitates, thereby rendering them useless for cleaning purposes.
The effectiveness of surfactant compositions in cleaning may be assessed by the effect of the surfactant on surface tension and by the ability of the surfactant to generate foam. Cleaning compositions which produce foam tend to be more effective than those which do not. It has been found that high surfactant concentrations in cleaning compositions result in effective cleaning and high foam. However, such compositions may have high production costs in view of the costs of the surfactants. In addition, rinsing of cleaned surfaces results in high concentrations of surfactant being disposed into drainage, which is undesirable in view of the potentially damaging effect on the environment.
There is therefore a need to provide cleaning compositions which are effective in cleaning, which produce good foam and which do so using lower total amounts of surfactant.